Читать книгу Fight For Love - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 5

THE letter came on a grey, wet morning in mid-June; just the sort of cold, damp summer day that made one’s thoughts turn lustfully to sun and heat, Natasha thought enviously as she studied the unfamiliar American postmark.

Texas—how many names could exercise such a powerful effect on the diverse imaginations of the Western world? But she knew no one from the Lone Star State, unless … Her forehead pleated in a faint frown as she flicked through her memory.

There had been that American last year. A faint smile curled round the corners of her mouth as she remembered the male in question. Tough and weathered like the Texas plain, he had displayed all the stubborn grittiness a dedicated television soap watcher could have wanted. She had rescued him from the wheels of a London taxi, closing her ears to the string of swear words turning the air blue, and her eyes to the sight of his stetson worn with an immaculate dark pin-striped business suit.

He was, she discovered, on his way to a business appointment at the Connaught, and she had helped him on his way, but not before he had insisted on taking a note of her name and address. She had judged it safe enough; after all, he looked as though he was well into his seventies.

She had been surprised, though, when he had invited her to dinner, and her boss at the prestigious Bond Street art gallery where she worked had cautioned her against accepting.

Maybe that was why she had. There was a wide vein of stubbornness in her own character—a legacy from a far-off Russian ancestress, whose unlikely blood still ran in the veins of an otherwise phlegmatic Cheshire farming family.

She put down the letter and stared out of her flat window at the dull grey vista of rooftops and television aerials. It was on days like this when she longed most to exchange the stifling claustrophobia of London for the open fields and gentle skyline of the Cheshire plain.

She had been brought up there on the farm that had been in her father’s family for generations, but after her parents’ tragic death in a multiple motorway pile-up, the farm had had to be sold off. She had been sixteen at the time, and it would have been impossible for her to run it herself; her father’s main love had been the developing and breeding of a new strain of cattle—an expensive programme that called for a far greater degree of knowledge than any sixteen-year-old could have.

Even so, after nine years she still missed it, still ached whenever she drove past well tended fields. Deep down inside, part of her would always feel this deep empathy for the land that went with being a farmer’s daughter.

She sighed faintly, imagining Adam’s shock if he were ever to look into her mind. Her boss was the epitome of a sophisticated man-about-town. Natasha knew that he would be more than willing to take their relationship beyond its present status of boss and employee were she to indicate to him that she wished him to do so.

She also knew that most of her friends would consider him a good catch—excellent husband material. He was independently comfortably off. He owned a pleasant house in a Chelsea mews, and it was being rumoured that within the next five years, he would be invited on to the board of the gallery which he now managed. So why did she continue to hold him at arm’s length? He was the right age for her, and good-looking in a blond, languid fashion, but if she was ever to tell him of this deep need inside her to live on the land, to be part of it and its cycle, she knew that he just wouldn’t understand.

Perhaps her looks were to blame for that. She just didn’t look the way men visualised a farmer’s daughter should look.

She was just over average height and willow-slim, her cloud of dark red hair curling lavishly on to her shoulders when it wasn’t constrained into the chic chignon she wore for work. Her eyes were long and slightly slanting, a deep tawny-gold, like those of a jungle cat. Her face had the sort of bone structure loved by the modelling world. As a teenager it had been suggested, in fact, that she should model, but she hadn’t been interested. She had been in love then. She smiled a little wryly for her teenage self. The object of her affections had been the son of another local farmer, but Rob, a sturdy Cheshire lad with his head set firmly on his shoulders, had not been interested in her. However, by the time her teenage crush on him had faded, her parents were dead, and she was living away from Cheshire in the care of the aunt and uncle who had taken her into their London home.

They had retired now to Spain, and to all intents and purposes she was on her own.

So why didn’t she give Adam the encouragement he was waiting for? He would make a good husband and father, and she wanted children … a family … Maybe it was because he didn’t represent enough challenge … She smiled wryly to herself and turned to study her letter again.

Fortunately, this morning she was not due into the gallery until mid-morning, since they never did much business so early in the week.

The letter must be from Tip Travers, although why on earth the old Texan should be writing to her …

At his behest she had acted as his guide while he was in London, showing him most of the more famous sights. Once she got used to his abrasive manner she had enjoyed his company, although always firmly refusing the money he offered her in exchange for her time.

By the end of his week’s stay, a mutual respect had built up between them. She had told him about her parents’ death, and about her longing to return to the land, and he had told her about the massive ranch he owned near the Rio Grande; about the oil that had been found on it, and about the feud that had broken out between his sons because of it.

One of them had become president of the oil company and one of them had remained on the ranch, and as she listened to him, Natasha had known that, like her, Tip’s first love had been the land and his cattle.

Now both his sons were dead, and the oil company had passed into other hands. His grandson ran the ranch and, although nothing had been said, Natasha had noticed the way the old man’s face tightened with pain when he mentioned his family and she guessed that there were still many unresolved conflicts within it.

She had enjoyed his company and never once regretted giving up the week’s holiday she had intended to spend in Spain with her aunt and uncle to show him around, but she had certainly never expected to hear from him again. He had been a tough, gritty individual with no room for sentimentality in his make-up.

She opened the letter, the words blurring as she trembled in sudden shock.

It wasn’t from Tip, but from his lawyers, informing her that she was a beneficiary under the terms of his will, and requesting her to fly out to Texas to the family ranch where the full position would be explained to her.

She sat down, stricken with shock and sadness. Somehow she found it hard to accept that Tip was dead. He had seemed such a vital man, despite his heart condition. He had confided to her in a rare moment of weakness that he had no intentions of dying yet, because he still had too much to do …

‘There’s that grandson of mine …’

He had shaken his head, and again Natasha had sensed some sort of conflict between the two men. She wasn’t a fool. It was easy to see how hard Tip must be to live with. He had his own decided views on everything—many of them uncompromisingly harsh—but then he had lived a harsh life, fighting for most of it to hang on to what he considered to be rightfully his. His grandfather had carved the ranch out of nothing, sometimes quite literally fighting with his bare hands to hold on to it and pass it down through his family.

Allowances had to be made for such men, although she was the first to admit that living with him on a day-to-day basis could never be easy. She had winced sometimes to see and hear how he had treated the staff at his hotel. The American credo might stipulate that all men were equal, but those with money, it appeared, were more equal than those without.

And yet, despite it all, she had liked him. In many ways he had reminded her of her own grandfather, who had died when she was six years old. They had both possessed that same brand of toughness, of hardiness, and of love for their land.

Her sadness at his death increased the greyness of the cold summer’s day. She picked the letter up again, studying it idly. Texas … Even the word was exciting … punchy … She couldn’t imagine what he had left her, or why. He had not struck her as the overly sentimental type.

Initially, when she had rescued him from the taxi, he had tried to tip her, but the cool hauteur with which she refused his money had made him eye her with speculative interest.

Later, she had suspected that he had deliberately overplayed his weakness on that first occasion, because during the latter part of the week, he never once displayed any of the feebleness that had made it necessary for him to request her support back to his hotel.

Quite how she had come to agree to act as his guide while he was in London she had no real idea. He had told her that originally it had been the intention that his grandson would accompany him, but some last-minute hitch at the ranch had made this impossible, so he had come on alone, and despite his bravado and his loudness he had been lonely.

Yes, that was what had drawn her to him, she recognised. His loneliness. It was a state she had experienced too much to be able to turn her back on it in anyone else.

But to leave her something … It didn’t ring true somehow; it was too out of character … No, he had been too shrewd, too deeply enmeshed in his own sense of family and history to leave something to an outsider. That smacked too much of a sentimentality she knew he hadn’t possessed.

She couldn’t imagine what he had left her … Another frown wrinkled her forehead. Her skin was the colour of cream, and impossible to tan. When she went abroad she spent a fortune on barrier creams, and she had to wear a hat to stop herself from getting sunstroke.

She tapped the letter with one long forefinger. Of course, she could always refuse to go. In that event, her bequest would be forfeit …

It was a rather odd clause to include … There was even a provision for her air fare. She frowned again. She had been quite open with Tip about her financial situation. He knew that …

She blocked off the thought because, since it was associated with her parents’ death and the subsequent sale of the farm, she found it painful still.

Suffice it to say that if she did go to Texas she would pay her own way there, and Tip must surely have realised that … If she went … she couldn’t go! She had already decided to spend two of her four weeks’ holiday in Spain with her aunt and uncle—she hadn’t seen them for over twelve months, and had tentatively been considering Adam’s suggestion that she spend the other fortnight with him on a friend’s yacht, sailing round the Greek islands.

She ought to go. She owed Tip that much, surely? Or was she using his bequest as an excuse to delay making a decision about her relationship with Adam? In her heart of hearts she knew she was already regretting her promise to join him and his friends. It had been given in a moment of weakness and had left her with a panicky feeling of being pushed, albeit gently, in a direction she wasn’t sure she wanted to go.

Now she had the perfect escape route.

Yes, that was the answer. Fate had handed her the perfect excuse. She already knew deep down inside her that Adam wasn’t the one for her. This way she could let him know it more tactfully than if she simply handed in her notice and left. She enjoyed her work, but she knew it wasn’t taxing her to the full, wasn’t making the most use of the university degree she had expended so much time and effort in gaining. After university there had been the fine arts course in Italy, paid for as a twenty-first birthday present by her aunt and uncle. She had enjoyed that, and it had been her entrée into the arty world. London was full of young women like her, she thought in a moment of cynicism. Over-qualified for what they did … If she didn’t look the way she did, elegant and decorative, Adam would never have hired her, despite her impressive qualifications. She remembered her life in Cheshire and how the farmers’ wives had been cherished for their ability to work hard alongside their husbands, rather than for their looks, but even there certain taboos and rules had applied. A woman was supposed to fit in with her husband’s life-style rather than develop one of her own. A farmer’s wife who wanted to write, or to paint, would have gained scant approval among her peers. In so many ways men made the rules and women lived by them.

She moved restlessly round her small flat, unable to define exactly what was making her feel so restless. Maybe it was an echo of Tip’s outrageous tall tales of Texas, with its wide open skies and harsh landscape. It was a land that demanded much from its people, and a land she knew next to nothing about, and yet a land that held some mystical allure for her, which she couldn’t totally understand.

Had that long ago ancestress of hers—who had come from the wild freedom of the Russian steppes in the wake of the Tsar Nicholas on his visit to Regency England—given her more than just her vivid colouring?

They had long memories in Cheshire, and her grandfather had told her the tale of the wild Russian woman brought back from London by his ancestor. She had been a serving girl in the retinue of one of the Russian princesses; a free woman who had boldly given up everything she knew to follow the man she loved.

Had she missed the empty wildness of her native land? Had she ached, as Natasha herself sometimes ached, for something more than her life encompassed? Had she known the same wildness of spirit deep down inside her? It was a wildness that Natasha had long ago learned to control, but it was still buried deep inside her: a yearning, an aching for … for what? For freedom? Why did she think she might find that freedom in Texas? Surely she hadn’t been foolish enough to fall for Tip’s stories? She had travelled enough to know that people were the same wherever one went—their emotions … their hopes … their fears—but still she knew that, despite all her logical analysis, she would go to Texas.

ADAM WAS astounded when she told him.

‘You can’t mean it!’ he expostulated, as they ate a late lunch in a small ‘in’ restaurant off Bond Street.

‘I have to go to find out what he’s left me,’ she pointed out calmly.

Adam frowned. ‘There is that, of course, but it won’t be much,’ he warned her. ‘I know these Texans, Natasha … It’s family first, second and third …’

Adam knew little of her life before she came to London, and so she smiled coolly at him, knowing that he had just destroyed any chance there might have been of a more intimate relationship between them. If he knew her so little that he actually thought she could be motivated by greed, then he was most definitely not the man for her.

Force of habit made her keep her thoughts to herself, her smile calm and unrevealing as she listened to him and ate her meal. She waited until they were on the point of leaving before telling him that she had not changed her mind.

‘Well, if you go, it means that you will have to leave the gallery,’ Adam told her. ‘I can’t afford to have you missing right now … and there are plenty of other women looking for jobs …’

It was a threat and they both knew it, but Natasha chose not to betray her knowledge.

‘I’m sorry, Adam. I have to go … As you say, you can’t afford to give me time off right now, so I think it best all round if I hand in my notice.’

He looked stupefied, and she was quite surprised by the sensation of exhilaration and freedom that rushed over her. She had worked at the gallery for two years without realising how much she was beginning to dislike it.

‘I suppose you’re hoping he’s left you enough to mean that you won’t have to work,’ Adam sneered. ‘Or maybe you’ve got other plans. With looks like yours, you might be able to hook yourself a real-life millionaire while you’re out there, is that it?’ he suggested crudely. ‘Well, be warned, Natasha. Oil prices aren’t what they were … and Texan women are pretty tough competition. Money marries money out there …’

She managed to hold on to her temper until after he had gone. She had no wish to quarrel with him, and there was little point in countering his snide suggestions. Let him think what he wished …

A husband, children, a home—yes, these were all things she wanted; but she had no need to sell herself to get them. When she married it would be to a man she could respect, a man whose life she could share, a man who respected her …

Respect? A mirthless smile tugged at her lips. There must be more of that good Cheshire blood in her than she had known … What had happened to love? Or, at twenty-five, was she too old to be chasing after that elusive chimera? She had seen her friends in love, and seen that love fade, only to be reborn again with someone else … Married couples changed partners in a strange and complex dance that left her wary and aloof. She still held true to the old tenets and old ways: marriage was for life … That was how she wanted hers to be. If she couldn’t have that, then better not to marry at all.

ONCE SHE’D made up her mind to go out to Texas, the whole trip began to take on the air of an adventure, fuelled as much by the fact that her aunt and uncle took a very similar view to her plans as Adam had, as by anything else.

Her aunt complained over the telephone that she no longer understood her; that she had always been such a practical, sensible girl.

Perhaps that was half the trouble—she had been too sensible, repressing the zinging love of life and adventure that was such a part of her character, out of a desire to please others rather than herself.

She grieved for Tip, of course; she had liked the old man very much but, as she went sedately about her daily life, making her plans, nothing could quite subdue the bubble of excitement frothing inside her.

Adam accused her of being childish.

‘What do you expect to find out there?’ he had demanded in a last, vain attempt to prevent her leaving. ‘Romance? Love? Do you think the whole state’s filled with lean-hipped, laconic cowboy types, just waiting to sweep you off your feet? Is that it?’

Of course she didn’t, but the picture he conjured up was an irresistible one, and only added to her determination to go. Sanely and honestly, she didn’t know why she was so intent on going; partly it was because of Tip, of course, but there was more to it than that—much, much more.

She was even buying a new wardrobe especially for the trip. The day after she made her decision she had thrown open her wardrobe doors and looked thoughtfully at the silk dresses and neat suits therein, and on a sudden impulse—remembering the jeans of her teenage years—she had gone out scouring the shops for clothes suitable to wear on a Texan cattle ranch.

She didn’t know how long she would have to stay; the letter simply stated that there were certain conditions attached to her bequest which were best explained in situ. She couldn’t begin to work out what they were but, at the end of the day, there was no way anyone could force her to accept either a bequest or conditions she did not want; and with that escape route very much to the forefront of her mind she felt quite comfortable about following the instructions contained in the lawyer’s letter.

She bought a round-trip ticket, and booked herself into a Dallas hotel room overnight. She held a current driver’s licence, her visa was rushed through and she was assured that there would be no problems in her hiring a car. If, as she suspected from Tip’s conversation, the ranch was a long, long way from the nearest town, then she would prefer to drive herself to her ultimate destination rather than rely on others.

Who would own the ranch now? Presumably Tip’s grandson; the one who had been refusing to knuckle down and marry as Tip had wanted him to do. ‘One grandson—that’s all I’ve got, and he’s so damned cussed he won’t settle down and start a family,’ he had complained to Natasha on more than one occasion, and sometimes in terms earthy enough to bright a faint tinge of colour to her pale skin. Tip was nothing if not frank about his grandson’s prowess with the female sex, and Natasha could see that he was more than proud of him, although deploring the fact that he was not prepared to confine his activities to one woman and get down to the all-important business of providing him with great-grandsons.

Oddly for an American, Tip had had no photographs to show her, but from his conversations she had gained the impression that his grandson was cast very much in the mould of the older man. She suspected that, if they met, she wouldn’t like him. What was acceptable in an old man of seventy-odd was not so easy to overlook in a much younger male!

Chauvinistic didn’t even begin to describe the Travers men, or so it seemed from Tip’s description of his own and his grandson’s attitudes to life. Arrogance seemed to sit on their shoulders as naturally as their Stetson hats fitted their heads. But, of course, she could be wrong; Tip’s grandson could turn out to be very different from the way she visualised him.

She had booked her flight for the end of the week, which left her just about enough time to sort herself out. A visit to her bank provided the necessary currency and traveller’s cheques. Like her aunt and uncle, the manager was surprised at what she was planning to do, and she wondered wryly how much of his concern sprang from a regard for her and how much from a regard for her bank balance, for Natasha was a very wealthy woman. Something she preferred to keep quiet about. Tip had wormed the truth out of her, but very few people did.

After her parents’ death, her trustees had been approached by a large building concern who wanted to buy the farm land, to put up an estate to service the new town being built locally. Her trustees had agreed and, cautious, careful men that they were, they had looked after her money very well for her during the years of her minority. If she had wanted to, she could quite properly have described herself as a millionairess—something that not even Adam knew.

Initially she had hated to even think about her wealth, because it went hand in hand with her parents’ death, and then later as she grew older, she had seen how the world treated those with money, especially young and vulnerable women with money, and so it was something she never mentioned.

She supported several charities, but always anonymously, and for the rest, she preferred to live modestly within her income from her job. The only significant purchase she had made from her inheritance had been her flat, and even that was surprisingly modest in view of her means. She didn’t even run a car—it wasn’t feasible while living in London. Clothes were her one extravagance, but even then she shopped shrewdly, waiting for the sales, spending her money on one good item and then adding less expensive accessories.

Tip had heartily approved of all this. He had told her, with a frankness that almost made her grit her teeth, that he didn’t approve of women inheriting money or property, but that he could see that she was an exception to this rule and that she was obviously a very sensible young woman.

It was ironic to think that he was the very means of her rebelling against that sensibleness, and she chuckled out loud, wondering what he would have thought had he known he was responsible for her altering so much of her way of life.