Читать книгу A Cold Creek Secret - RaeAnne Thayne - Страница 9

When When Brant returned to his living room, he found Maura Howard—aka Mimi Van Hoyt, tabloid princess du jour—gazing into the fire, her features pale and her wide, mobile mouth set into a tense frown.

A few years ago during one of his Iraq deployments, he’d had the misfortune of seeing her one miserable attempt at moviemaking at a showing in the rec hall in Tikrit. He was pretty sure the apparent turmoil she was showing now must be genuine, since her acting skills had been roughly on par with the howler monkey that had enjoyed a bit in the movie.

As long as she didn’t cry again, he could handle things. He was ashamed to admit that he could handle a dozen armed insurgents better than a crying woman.

“Everything will seem better in the morning,” he promised her. “Once the storm passes over, I can call a tow for your car. I’m sure they can fix it right up in town and send you on your way.”

Her hands twisted on her lap and those deep green eyes shifted away from him. In pictures he’d seen of her, he always thought those eyes held a hard, cynical edge, but he could see none of that here.

“I, um, can’t really afford a tow right now.”

If she hadn’t said the words with such a valiant attempt at sincerity in her voice, he would have snorted outright at that blatant whopper. Everybody on the planet who had ever seen a tabloid knew her father was Werner Van Hoyt, real estate mogul, Hollywood producer and megabillionaire. She was a trust fund baby whose sole existence seemed to revolve around attending the hottest parties and being seen with other quasi-celebrities at the hippest clubs until all hours of the day and night.

Did she think he was a complete idiot? The SUV in question was a Mercedes, for heaven’s sake.

But if Mimi wanted to pretend to be someone else, who was he to stop her?

“The rental car company should take care of the details. They would probably even send another vehicle for you. Barring that, I’m sure Wylie down at the garage will take a credit card or work out a payment plan with you. But we can cross that bridge once the snow clears. Let’s get your face cleaned up so you can get to bed.”

She didn’t look as if she appreciated any of those options, at least judging by the frustration tightening her features. He had a pretty strong feeling she probably hadn’t been thwarted much in her life. It would probably do her a world of good not to get her way once in a while.

He had to bite his lip to keep from smiling. Big shocker there. He hadn’t found much of anything amusing since that miserable afternoon three weeks ago in a remote village in Paktika Province.

Longer, come to think of it. His world had felt hollow and dark around the edges since Jo’s death in the fall. But somehow Mimi seemed to remind him that life could sometimes be a real kick in the seat.

He had to give her credit for only flinching a little when he cleansed the small cut over her eye and stuck a bandage on it.

“It’s a pretty small cut and shouldn’t leave a scar.”

“Thank you,” she said in a subdued voice, then gracefully covered a yawn. “I’m sorry. I’ve been traveling for several hours and it’s been a…stressful day.”

“Don’t worry about it. Your room is back here. It’s nothing fancy but it’s comfortable and you’ve got your own bathroom.”

“I hate to ask but, speaking of bathrooms,” she said, “Simone could probably use a trip outside.”

“Yeah, she has been dancing around for the door for the last few minutes. I’ll take her out and try to make sure she doesn’t get swallowed by the snow, then bring her in to you.”

“Thank you for…everything,” she murmured. “Not too many people would take in a complete stranger—and her little dog, too—in the middle of a blizzard.”

“Maybe not where you’re from. But I would guess just about anybody in Cold Creek Canyon would have done the same.”

“Then it must be a lovely place.”

“Except in the middle of a February blizzard,” he answered. She didn’t object when he cupped her elbow to help her down the hall and he tried to store up all the memories. How she smelled of some light citrus-floral, undoubtedly expensive perfume. How her silk turtleneck caressed his fingers. How she was much shorter than he would have guessed, only just reaching his shoulder.

The guys would want to know everything about this surreal interlude and Brant owed it to them to memorize every single detail.

Like the rest of the house, the guest suite was on the shabby side, with aging furniture and peeling wallpaper. But it had a comfortable queen-sized bed, an electric fireplace he’d turned on when he made up the bed and a huge claw-foot tub in the bathroom.

The main house had been mostly empty for the past two years except for his occasional visits between deployments. Since he left Cold Creek a dozen years ago for the military, he had rented the house out sporadically. Gwen Bianca stayed in the small cabin on the property rent-free in exchange for things like keeping the woodpile stocked and the roof from collapsing in.

His last tenants had moved out six months ago and he hadn’t bothered to replace them since the rent mostly covered barebones maintenance and county property taxes on the land anyway and was hardly worth the trouble most of the time.

Now that Gwen had announced she was moving away, he didn’t know what to do with Western Sky.

“It’s not much but you should be warm and comfortable.”

“I’ll be fine. Thank you again for your hospitality.”

“I don’t know if this is a warning or an apology in advance, but I’ll be checking on you occasionally in the night.”

“Do you think I’m going to run off with your plasma TV?”

He fought another smile, wondering where they were all coming from. “You’re welcome to it, if you think you can make a clean getaway on foot in this storm. No. There’s a chance you had a head injury. I don’t think so but you were in and out of consciousness for a while there. I can’t take any chance of missing signs of swelling or unusual behavior.”

She sat on the edge of the bed with a startled sort of work. “I appreciate your…diligence, but I’m sure I don’t have a brain injury. The air bag protected me.”

“I guess you forgot to mention you were a neurologist.”

She frowned. “I’m not.”

“What are you, then?” he asked, curious as to how she would answer. Heiress?Aimless socialite? Lousy actress?

After a long pause, she forced a smile. “I work for a charitable organization in Los Angeles.”

Nice save, he thought. It could very well be true, since she had enough money to rescue half the world.

“Well, unless your charitable organization specializes in self-diagnosing traumatic brain injuries, I’m going to have to err on the side of caution here and stick to the plan of checking on you through the night.”

“Don’t tell me you’re the neurologist now.”

“Nope. Just an Army Ranger who’s been hit over the head a few too many times in my career. I’ll check on you about every hour to make sure your mental status hasn’t changed.”

“How would you even know if my mental status has changed or not? You just met me.”

He laughed out loud at that, a rusty sound that surprised the heck out of him.

“True enough. I guess when you stand on your head and start reciting the Declaration of Independence at four in the morning, I’ll be sure to ask if that’s normal behavior before I call the doctor.”

She almost smiled in return but he sensed she was troubled about more than just her car accident.

None of his concern, he reminded himself. Whatever she was doing in this isolated part of Idaho was her own business.

“I put one of my T-shirts on the bed there for you to sleep in. I’ll bring your little purse pooch back after I let her out. Let me know if you need anything else or if you get hungry. The Western Sky isn’t a four-star resort but I can probably rustle up some tea and toast.”

“Right now I only want to rest.”

“Can’t blame you there,” he answered. “It’s been a strange evening all the way around. Come on, pup.”

The little dog barked, her black eyes glowing with eagerness in her white fur, and followed him into the hallway.

The wind still howled outside but he managed to find a spot of ground somewhat sheltered by the back patio awning for her to delicately take care of business.

To his relief, the dog didn’t seem any more inclined to stay out in the howling storm than he did. She hurried back to where he stood on the steps and he scooped her up and carried her inside, where he dried off her paws with an old towel.

He refused to admit to himself that he was trying to spare Mimi four cold, wet paws against her when the dog jumped up on her bed.

When he softly knocked on the guest room door, she didn’t answer. After a moment, he took the liberty of pushing it open. She was already asleep, her eyes closed, and he set the dog beside her on the bed, thinking she would need the comfort of the familiar if she awoke in a strange place in the middle of the night.

From the dim light in the hallway, he could just make out her high cheekbones and that lush, kissable mouth.

She was even prettier in person, just about the loveliest thing he had ever seen in real life.

She was beautiful and she made him forget the ghosts that haunted him, even if only for a little while. For a guy who only had a week before he had to report back to a war zone, both of those things seemed pretty darn seductive right about now.

Not the most restful sleep she had ever experienced.

At 6:00 a.m., after a night of being awakened several times by the keening wind outside and by her unwilling host insistent on checking her questionable mental status, she awoke to Simone licking her face.

Mimi groaned as her return to consciousness brought with it assorted aches and pains. The sting of the cut on her forehead and the low throb of a headache at the base of her skull were the worst of them. Her shoulder muscles ached, but she had a feeling that was more from the stress of the past two days than from any obvious injury.

She pushed away her assorted complaints to focus on the tiny bichon frise she adored. “Do you need to go outside, sweetie?” she asked.

Instead of leaping from the bed and scampering to the door as she normally would have done, Simone merely yawned, stretched her four paws out, then closed her eyes again.

“I guess not,” Mimi answered with a frown at that bit of unusual behavior. Simone usually jumped to go outside first thing after a full night of holding her bladder. Mimi could only hope she hadn’t decided to relieve herself somewhere in this strange house.

She looked around the bedroom in the pale light of predawn but couldn’t see any obvious signs of a mishap in any corner. What she did find was her entire set of luggage piled up inside the door, all five pieces of it, including Simone’s carrier.

The sight of them all stunned her and sent a funny little sparkle jumping through her. Somehow in the middle of the raging blizzard, Major Western had gone to the trouble of retrieving every one of them for her.

In the night, more vague recollections had come together in her head and she vividly remembered he had been forced to wade through the ice-crusted creek to reach her after the accident. In order to retrieve her luggage from the SUV, he would have had to venture into that water yet again. She could hardly believe he had done that for her, yet the proof was right there before her eyes in the corner.

No. There had to be some catch. He just seemed entirely too good to be real. The cynical part of her that had been burned by men a few dozen too many times couldn’t quite believe anyone would find her worth that much effort.

She pressed a hand to her stomach, to the tiny secret growing there.

“Are you okay in there, kiddo?” she murmured.

She had bought a half-dozen pregnancy books the moment she left the doctor’s office but hadn’t dared read any of them on the plane, afraid to risk that someone would see through her disguise and tip off the tabloids about her reading choices. Instead, she’d had to be content with a pregnancy week-by-week app on her cell phone, and she had devoured every single word behind her sunglasses on the plane.

At barely eleven weeks, Mimi knew she wasn’t far enough along to actually feel the baby move. Maybe in a few more weeks. But that didn’t stop her from imagining the little thing swimming around in there.

Something else that didn’t feel quite real to her, that in a few months she was going to be a mother. She had only had two days to absorb the stunning news that her brief but intense affair with Marco Mendez had resulted in an unexpected complication.

In only a few days, the provider of half her baby’s DNA was marrying another woman. And not just any woman but Jessalyn St. Claire, Hollywood’s current favorite leading lady, sweet and cute and universally adored. Marco and Jessalyn. “Messalyn,” as the tabloids dubbed the pair of them. The two beautiful, talented, successful people were apparently enamored of each other.

It was a match made in heaven—or their respective publicists’ offices. Mimi wasn’t sure which.

She only knew that if word leaked out that she was expecting Marco Mendez’s baby, Jessalyn would flip out, especially since the timing of Mimi’s pregnancy would clearly reveal that they had carried on their affair several months after Marco had proposed to Jessalyn in such a public venue as the Grammy Awards, where he won Best Male Vocalist of the year.

Mimi probed her heart for the devastation she probably should be feeling right about now. For two months, she had been expecting Marco to break off the sham engagement and publicly declare he loved Mimi, as he had privately assured her over and over was his intention.

The declaration never came. She felt like an idiot for ever imagining it would. Worse, when she had gathered up every bit of her courage and whatever vestiges of pride she had left and finally called him to meet her at their secret place after the stunning discovery of her pregnancy, he hadn’t reacted at all like she had stupidly hoped.

Arrogant, egocentric, selfish.

She was all those things and more. She had secretly hoped that when Marco found out she was pregnant, he would pull her into his arms and declare he couldn’t go through with the marriage now, that he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her and the child they had created.

She was pathetically stupid.

Instead, his sleek, sexy features had turned bone-white and he had asked her if she’d made an appointment yet to take care of the problem.

When she hesitantly told him she was thinking about keeping the baby, he had become enraged. She had never believed Marco capable of violence until he had stood with veins popping out in his neck, practically foaming at the mouth in that exclusive, secluded house in Topanga Canyon he kept for these little trysts.

He had called her every vile name in the book and some she’d never heard of. By the time he was done, she felt like all those things he called her. Skank. Whore. Bitch.

And worse.

In the end, she’d somehow found the strength to tell him emphatically that keeping the baby or not would be her own decision. If she kept the baby, it would be hers alone and he would relinquish any claim to it. She wanted nothing more to do with him.

If he touched her or threatened her again in any way, she would tell her father, a man both of them knew had the power to decimate careers before he’d taken a sip of his morning soy latte.

She pressed a hand to her tiny baby bump.

“I’m sorry I picked such a jerk to be your daddy,” she whispered.

She loved this baby already. The idea of it, innocent and sweet, seemed to wrap around all the empty places in her heart. The only blessing in the whole mess was that she and Marco had, unbelievably, been able to keep their affair a secret thus far.

Oh, maybe a few rumors had been circulating here and there. But she figured if she stayed out of the camera glare at least until the wedding was over and then took an extended trip somewhere quiet, she just might muddle through this whole thing. She had no doubt she could find someone willing to claim paternity for enough money.

Or maybe she would just drop out of sight for the rest of her life, relocate to some isolated place in the world where people had never heard of Mimi Van Hoyt or her more ridiculous antics.

Borneo might be nice. Or she could move in with some friendly indigenous tribe along the Amazon.

Staying with Gwen at least until the wedding was over would have solved her short-term problem, if she hadn’t been too blasted shortsighted to pick up the phone first.

Why couldn’t she still stay here?

The thought was undeniably enticing. Gwen might not be here but, except for her absence, the ranch still offered all the advantages that had led Mimi to fly out on a snowy February afternoon to find her exstepmother. It was isolated and remote, as far from the craziness of a celebrity wedding as Mimi could imagine.

She thought of her host wading through a creek in the middle of a blizzard to retrieve her luggage. He seemed a decent sort of man, with perhaps a bit of a hero complex. Maybe Major Western could be convinced to let her stay just for a few days.

She closed her eyes, daunted by the very idea of asking him. Though she had never had much trouble bending the males of the species to her will—her father being the most glaring exception—she had a feeling Brant Western wouldn’t be such an easy sell.

Later. She would wait until the sun was at least up before she worried about it, she decided with a yawn.

When she awoke again, a muted kind of daylight streamed through the curtains and an entirely too male figure was standing beside her bed.

“Morning.” Her voice came out sultry and low, more a product of sleepiness than any effort to be sexy, but something flared in his eyes for just a moment, then was gone.

Okay, maybe convincing him she should stay wouldn’t be as difficult as she had feared, Mimi thought, hiding a secret smile even as she was a little disappointed he wouldn’t present more of a challenge.

“Good morning.” His voice was a little more tightly wound than she remembered and she thought his eyes looked tired. From monitoring her all night? she wondered. Or from something else?

“Sorry to wake you but I haven’t been in to check on you for a couple of hours. I was just seeing if the dog needed to go out again.”

“Did you take her out in the night?”

He nodded. “She’s not too crazy about snow.”

“Oh, I know. Once in Chamonix she got lost in a snow drift. It was terrifying for both of us.”

She shouldn’t have said that, she realized at once. Maura Howard wasn’t the sort to visit exclusive ski resorts in the Swiss Alps, but Brant didn’t seem to blink an eye.

“I’m on my way to take care of the horses. I’ll put her out again before I leave and I’ll try not to lose her in the snow. How’s your head?”

“Better. The rest of me is a little achy but I’ll survive. Is it still storming?”

He nodded tersely as she sat up in bed and seemed intent on keeping his gaze fixed on some fixed spot in the distance as if he were standing at attention on parade somewhere. “We’ve had more than a foot and it’s still coming down.” He paused. “There’s a good chance you might be stuck here another day or two. It’s going to take at least that long for the plows to clear us out.”

“Oh, no!”

Though secretly relieved, she figured he expected the news to come as a shock, so she tried to employ her glaringly nonexistent acting skills. Then, pouring it on a little thicker, she stretched a little before tucking a wayward curl behind her ear.

She didn’t miss the way his pupils flared just a little, even as he pretended not to pay her any attention.

“I’m so sorry to be even more of an inconvenience to you, Major Western.”

“Around here I’m plain Brant.”

“Brant.” It was a strong, masculine name that somehow fit him perfectly.

“Thank you so much for bringing my luggage in. It was so kind of you.”

“No big deal. I thought you would feel more comfortable if you had your own things, especially since it looks like you’re going to be here another night.”

“I feel so foolish. If I’d only called Gwen before showing up on her doorstep like this, you wouldn’t be stuck with me now.”

“That was a pretty idiotic thing to do,” he agreed flatly. “What would have happened to you if you’d slid off in a spot in the canyon that wasn’t so close to any houses? You might have been stuck in the storm in your car all night and probably would have frozen to death before anybody found you.”

His bluntness grated and she almost glared but at the last minute she remembered she needed his help. Or maybe not. She needed a place to stay, but that didn’t necessarily mean she had to stay with him.

“I hate imposing on you,” she said as another idea suddenly occurred to her, one she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of the night before or this morning when she was mulling over her various options. “What if we called Gwen and asked her if I could stay at her house since she’s gone?”

“Great idea,” he said, with somewhat humiliating alacrity. “There’s only one problem with it. Gwen’s furnace went out the day she left. I’ve got a company coming out to replace it but they can’t make it to the ranch until later in the week. With the blizzard, it might even be next week before they come out. Occupied dwellings have precedence in weather like this so I’m afraid you’re stuck here until the storm clears.”

She tried to look appropriately upset by that news. At least his insistence on that particular point would give her a little breathing room to figure out how she could convince him to let her stay longer.

Four hours later, she was rethinking her entire strategy.

If she had to stay here until Marco’s wedding was over, she was very much afraid she would die of boredom.

She had never been very good with dead time. She liked to fill it with friends and shopping and trips to her favorite day spa. Okay, she had spent twenty-six years wading in shallow waters. She had no problem admitting it. She liked having fun and wasn’t very good at finding ways to entertain herself.

That particular task seemed especially challenging here at Western Sky. Major Western had very few books—most were in storage near his home base in Georgia, he had told her—and the DVD selection was limited. And of course the satellite television wasn’t working because too much snow had collected in the dish, blocking the receiver. Or at least that’s the explanation her host provided.

The house wasn’t wired to the Internet, since he was rarely here and didn’t use it much anyway.

She probably could have dashed off some texts and even an e-mail or two on her Smartphone, but she had made the conscious decision to turn it off. For now, she was Maura Howard. It might be a little tough selling that particular story if she had too much contact with the outside world.

Her host had made himself scarce most of the day, busy looking over ranch accounts or bringing in firewood or knocking ice out of the water troughs for the livestock.

She had a feeling he was avoiding her, though she wasn’t sure why, which left her with Simone for company.

Brant poked his head into the kitchen just after noon to tell her to help herself to whatever she wanted for lunch but that he had a bit of a crisis at Gwen’s cabin with frozen pipes since the furnace wasn’t working.

Mimi had settled on a solitary lunch of canned tomato soup that was actually quite tasty. After she washed and dried her bowl, marveling that there was a house in America which actually didn’t possess a dishwasher, she returned it to the rather dingy cupboard next to the sink and was suddenly hit by a brainstorm.

This was how she could convince Brant to let her stay.

A brilliant idea, if she did say so herself. Not bad for a shallow girl, she thought some time later as she surveyed the contents of every kitchen cupboard, jumbled on all the countertops.

She stood on a stepladder with a bucket of sudsy water in front of her as she scoured years of grease and dust from the top of his knotty pine cabinets.

Here was a little known secret the tabloids had never unearthed about Mimi Van Hoyt. They would probably have a field day if anyone ever discovered she liked to houseclean when she was bored or stressed.

Between boarding school stays, her father’s longterm housekeeper Gert used to give her little chores to do. Cleaning out a closet, organizing a drawer, polishing silver. Her father probably never would have allowed it if he’d known, but she and Gert had both been very good at keeping secrets from Werner Van Hoyt.

She had never understood why she enjoyed it so much and always been a little ashamed of what she considered a secret vice until one of her more insightful therapists had pointed out those hours spent with Gert at some mundane task or other were among the most consistent of her life. Perhaps cleaning her surroundings was her mental way of creating order out of the chaos that was her life amid her father’s multiple marriages and divorces.

Here in Major Western’s house, it was simply something to pass the time, she told herself, digging in a little harder on a particularly tough stain.

“What would you be doing?”

Mimi jerked her head around and found Major Western standing in the kitchen doorway watching her with an expression that seemed a complicated mix—somewhere between astonished and appalled.

Simone—exceptional watchdog that she was—awoke at his voice and jumped up from her spot on a half-circle rug by the sink. She yipped an eager greeting while Mimi flushed to the roots of her hair.

“Sorry. I was…bored.”

He gave her a skeptical look. “Bored. And so, out of the blue, you decided to wash out my kitchen cabinets.”

“Somebody needed to. You wouldn’t believe the grime on them.”

She winced as soon as the words escaped. Okay, that might not be the most tactful thing to mention to a man she was hoping would keep her around for a few days.

“You’ve been busy with your Army career, I’m sure,” she quickly amended. “I can only imagine how difficult it is to keep a place like this clean when you’re not here all the time.”

He looked both rueful and embarrassed as he moved farther into the kitchen and started taking off his winter gear.

“I’ve been renting it out on and off for the last few years and tenants don’t exactly keep the place in the best shape. I’m planning on having a crew come in after I return to Afghanistan to clean it all out and whip it into shape before I put it on the market.”

She paused her scrubbing, struck both that he had been in Afghanistan and that he would put such a wonderful house on the market. “Why would you sell this place? I can’t see much out there except snow right now but I would guess it’s a beautiful view. At least Gwen always raves about what inspiration she finds here for her work.”

He unbuttoned his soaked coat and she tried not to notice the muscles of his chest that moved under his sweater as he worked his arms out of the sleeves.

“It’s long past time.”

He was quiet for several moments. “The reality is, I’m only here a few weeks of the year, if that, and it’s too hard to take care of the place long-distance, even with your friend Gwen keeping an eye on things for me. Anyway, Gwen’s leaving, too. She told me she’s buying a house outside Jackson Hole and that just seemed the final straw. I can’t even contemplate how daunting it would be to find someone to replace her. Not to mention keeping up with general maintenance like painting the barn.”

It was entirely too choice an opportunity to pass up. “This is perfect. I’ll help you.”

Again that eyebrow crept up as he toed off his winter boots. “You want to paint the barn? I’m afraid that might be a little tough, what with the snow and all.”

She frowned. “Not the barn. But this.” She pointed with her soapy towel. “The whole place needs a good scrubbing, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

He stared at her. “Let me get this straight. You’re volunteering to clean my house?”

She set the soapy towel back in the bucket and perched on the top rung of the ladder to face him. “Sure, why not?”

“I can think of a few pretty compelling reasons.”

She flashed him a quick look, wondering what he meant by that, but she couldn’t read anything in his expression.

“The truth is, I need a place to stay for a few days.”

“Why?”

“It’s a long, boring story.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” he murmured, looking fascinated.

“Trust me,” she said firmly. “I need a place to stay for a few days—let’s just leave it at that—and you could use some work done around here to help you ready the place for prospective buyers.”

“And you think you can help me do that?”

The skepticism in his voice stung, for reasons she didn’t want to examine too carefully. “Believe it or not, I’ve actually helped a friend stage houses for sale before and I know a little about it. I can help you, I swear. Why shouldn’t we both get something we need?”

He leaned against the counter next to the refrigerator and crossed his arms over his chest. As he studied her, she thought she saw doubt, lingering shock and an odd sort of speculation in his eyes.

After a moment he shook his head. “I can’t ask you to do that, Ms. Howard.”

“You didn’t ask. I’m offering.”

Five days. That was all she needed to avoid Hollywood’s biggest wedding in years. With a little time and distance, she hoped she could figure out what she was going to do with the mess of her life.

“I really do need a place to stay, Major Western.”

She thought she saw a softening in the implacable set to his jaw, a tiny waver in his eyes, so she whipped out the big guns. The undefeated, never-fail, invincible option.

She beamed at him, her full-throttle, pour-on-the-charm smile that had made babbling fools out of every male she’d ever wielded it on. “I swear, you’ll be so happy with the job I do, you might just decide not to sell.”

Though she saw obvious reluctance in his dark eyes, he finally sighed. “A few days. Why not? As long as you don’t make any major changes. Just clean things out a little and make the rooms look better. That’s all.”

Relief coursed through her. Simone, sensing Mimi’s excitement, barked happily.

“You won’t regret it, I promise.”

He shook his head and reached into the refrigerator for a bottled water. In his open, honest expression, she could see he was already sorry. She didn’t care, she told herself, ignoring that same little sting under her heart. Whether he wanted her here or not, somehow she knew that Major Brant Western was too honorable to kick her out after he’d promised she could stay.