Читать книгу The Tycoon's Tots - Stella Bagwell - Страница 10

Chloe Murdock galloped the chestnut around the track a second time, then slowed him to a trot. He wasn’t ready to quit their run, and Chloe had to strain against the reins to remind him who was boss.

She’d just gotten the horse in check when she noticed the man standing at the top of the hill, a few yards away from the stable. He was looking in her direction, his hand shading his eyes, even though he was wearing a pair of dark glasses.

It wasn’t unusual for a man to visit the ranch. Men often stopped by to inquire about buying a horse or bull. The Bar M had always been known for its good stock and that hadn’t changed even though her father, Tomas, had died and no longer ran the place.

Yet even from this distance, Chloe got the impression that this man in his khaki slacks and expensive leather jacket was not here to buy or sell stock. At least not the four-legged kind she was familiar with.

By the time she reached the top of the hill, the chestnut was still dancing with the urge to run. His sides were heaving and his flared nostrils blew streams of vapor into the crisp morning air. The man on the ground kept a careful distance from the woman and the fired up thoroughbred.

“Hello,” she said to him. “I’m Chloe Murdock. Can I help you?”

Not certain he could trust her or the horse, Wyatt remained several steps away.

“I’m Wyatt Sanders. The woman up at the house told me I would find you down here.” Innate good manners had him pulling off his sunglasses and slipping them inside his shirt pocket.

Chloe was a woman who’d never been that impressed with men, good-looking or otherwise, but she had to admit this one was quite striking. His hair was as black and shiny as a crow’s wing and slicked straight back from a wide forehead. His hooded gray eyes were a cool and startling contrast against his darkly tanned skin. Though his lips were compressed in a thin line at the moment, she got the impression of chiseled fullness. There was money and city polish written from the toes of his brown Italian loafers to the top of his expensive haircut.

“If you’re looking for a racehorse, I’m not inclined to sell. A few months ago, I did let a five-year-old go in a claiming race, but the ten I have now are all young and,” she flashed him a charming smile, “fast.”

Wyatt hadn’t been ready for the sight of this woman, nor the sexy tilt of her berry colored lips. He’d been expecting a cowgirl of course—what else would one find on a ranch?—but all the cowgirls he’d ever seen in Houston wore skin-tight blue jeans, overdone makeup and big hairdos.

But this girl, or more rightly this slip of a woman, sitting astride the nervous thoroughbred was nothing like that. She was wearing jeans all right, but they were black and loose fitting with the hems tucked into a pair of brown western boots that had intricate stitching on the tall tops. An old gray rugby shirt served as her blouse. In spite of the cool air, the neck was unbuttoned and the sleeves were pushed up to her elbows to show a pair of slender but strongly muscled forearms. Her straight hair was the color of rich burgundy wine. White the crown was covered with a red baseball cap, the cape of it lying against her back shone like red silk in the morning sun.

There was no makeup or artificial color to be found on her face, yet she looked anything but pale. The wind had blushed her cheeks and lips and her deep green eyes glittered like twin emeralds as she looked down at him from her lofty perch on the horse’s back.

“Actually,” he said, “I’m…not looking to buy a racehorse.”

Her winged brows arched at him. “Oh. Then you’re here about a bull. Well, you’ll have to see my sister, Rose.”

“I’m not here about a bull, either. I’m here…” He paused as he realized all the things he’d planned on saying, all the questions his mind had dwelled on these past weeks, were fast slipping away as he looked up at Chloe Murdochs face. She was nothing like the woman he’d thought he’d be dealing with, and the difference had thrown him.

“Yes?” she prompted.

“I’m here to talk to you.”

The chestnut was hot and if Chloe didn’t keep him moving while he cooled down, his muscles would be stiff tomorrow. She had no intention of letting that happen, no matter what business this man wanted to discuss.

“You’ll have to let me put Banjo on the walker.”

She reined the horse away from him and headed over to the stable. Wyatt followed, carefully stepping around piles of horse manure as he went.

At the stable, Chloe jerked off the small racing saddle, tossed it over the fence, then led the tall chestnut over to where three other horses were being mechanically led around a large circle.

After she’d fastened Banjo’s lead rope to one of the free arms and put the horses in motion again, she walked over to the stranger and extended her hand to him.

“Sorry about the interruption, er—Mr. Sanders, is it?”

Wyatt hadn’t planned on shaking Chloe Murdock’s hand, but he found it impossible to rebuff her. The genuine warmth he sensed about her compelled him to remain a gentleman.

“Yes,” he answered. “It’s Sanders. Wyatt Sanders.”

She had a healthy grip for someone with such a small hand. He could feel calluses on her palms, something he’d never encountered on a woman before. But then he’d never known any woman who actually did manual labor such as this one obviously did.

“Well, Mr. Sanders, what can I help you with today? Are you looking for land in this area?”

Her assumption put a quirk of amusement on his lips. “What makes you think that?” he found himself asking.

Chloe shrugged as she once again eyed him with open curiosity. “You’re obviously not from around here. I thought you might be in real estate.”

The wind was playing with her shoulder length hair, whipping a few strands across her face. She had pale golden skin, he noticed, with one freckle a fraction above the edge of her upper lip.

He forced himself to drop her hand, but his eyes refused to leave her face. Incredibly, she was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen. “I’m an oilman from Houston, Texas,” he told her.

She smiled at that and Wyatt felt something inside him jerk as though he’d been stung by an arrow.

“A Texas oilman,” she repeated with faint amusement. “What are you doing out here in New Mexico? Looking to buy or lease the mineral rights in this area? I wasn’t aware this part of the state had petroleum resources. ‘Course, I know there’s the big Conoco field over by Eunice and there’s oil down at Lordsburg, but you’re talking at least a couple of hundred miles from here. And that’s all desert land. You’re in the mountains now.”

So Wyatt had noticed. One minute he’d been in the desert, then before he’d realized it the terrain had changed, and he’d been winding through forested mountains and lush green valley floor. The change in landscape had surprised him almost as much as the sight of Chloe Murdock. “I’m not here looking for oil. It’s something more personal.”

Her eyes narrowed at his evasiveness. “Personal? Dear God, I hope you’re not going to tell me it has something to do with my father Tomas,” she said without preamble.

“It does. In a way,” he said and was struck by how much he wanted to avoid the issue that had brought him to this ranch and this woman. It would have been pleasant to simply talk to her a few more minutes.

“Look, Mr. Sanders, my father has been dead for several months. I’m not trying to make excuses, but whatever he owes you, we didn’t know about it. We’ve been trying to pay off his debts, but for right now, all I can say is you’ll just have to stand in line and wait your turn.”

The memory of Belinda’s coffin being lowered into the ground suddenly flashed through Wyatt’s mind. “What your father owes me could never be repaid.”

“I beg your pardon?”

His gray eyes clashed with the spark of her green ones. “You heard what I said. Your father took something from me that can’t be compensated.”

Chloe was fast losing her patience with this man. He’d obviously come here for money. Why didn’t he just spit it out and be done with all this dallying around?

“I’ve always heard Texans go at things at a slower pace, but do you think for this one time you could speed things along and get to the point? I have lots of work waiting on me and the morning is already half gone.”

His jaw clenched. “Your father can’t give my sister back to me,” he said tightly.

Chloe drew in a sharp little breath. “Who are you?”

He took a step closer. “I told you who I was.”

Her full lips twisted at his response. “An oilman from Houston. So what connection do you have with me or this ranch?”

Her voice, which up until a moment ago had been warm and lilting, was now sharp-edged and demanding. “My sister was Belinda Waller and your father killed her,” he said flatly.

The first spill Chloe had taken on the galloping track had knocked the wind from her lungs and scrambled her senses. For several minutes she’d been unable to tell if the ground was really the sky or visa versa. Hearing Belinda Waller had a brother left her feeling as though she’d just taken another walloping fall.

“My father didn’t kill anybody,” she finally managed to say. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.”

Turning, she left him standing on the muddy hillside. She knew he would follow her. He hadn’t come all this way to let things go at that. But Chloe was too shaken, too stunned to simply stand stock-still while the man bored holes in her with those cold gray eyes.

“I’m not going to be put off, Ms. Murdock. We have things to talk about.”

She glanced over her shoulder to see he’d joined her in the long, dim stable. For a moment all Chloe could think was that he looked like an alien standing there on the wood shavings in his crisply ironed cotton and softly worn leather. He wasn’t from this world, so why had he come here?

With a flip of her wrist, she jerked the baseball cap from her head and shook her hair back from her face. “Then talk. Who’s stopping you?”

His teeth ground together as he watched her slap the cap back on her head, then toss a shovel into a wheelbarrow and push it into an empty stall.

“I’d think you’d have the courtesy to go up to the house and give me your undivided attention.”

Chloe didn’t bother to look at him. Instead, she scooped up a shovelful of dirty wood shavings and horse manure. “I don’t have time to go through social niceties with you. And even if I did, I wouldn’t.”

Oilmen, even the ones like himself who worked in plush offices and drove Mercedeses, were used to blunt, rough talk interspersed with a wide range of four-letter words. It went with the business. But that was from his male counterparts. The women he encountered were always full of sugar and ready to give him all the attention he wanted. He couldn’t believe Chloe Murdock was dismissing him as though he were no better than the stuff she was tossing into the wheelbarrow.

“I didn’t come here to fight with you,” he said, trying his best to hold onto his temper.

“After what your sister did to my family, I can’t believe you had the gall to come here at all.”

Wyatt didn’t know what had come over him. Any other time, he would have taken hold of her shoulder and physically made her turn and face him. Instead, he found himself staring, fascinated by her rounded behind as she bent over the shovel, the fluid movements of her body as she pitched another scoopful.

“Flinging accusations at each other isn’t going to get us anywhere,” he said.

“I can’t say I want to get anywhere with you,” she said with a strained grunt as she forced the shovel point down through the packed shavings.

“You’re not making this any easier for either of us.”

Anger surged through Chloe, but she tried to take it out on the shovel instead of him. “Believe me, Mr. Sanders, nothing has been easy since my father died. And as for anyone killing anybody, I’d say your sister was the major contributor to the heart attack that killed Tomas. She was blackmailing him, you know. Milking him of his money, and his self-respect. What kind of woman would do that?”

“I think—”

Before he could say more, Chloe flung the shovel to the ground and whirled on him. Her eyes were shooting sparks as hot as her auburn hair. “Tell me, Mr. Sanders, what sort of woman would leave two little helpless babies on a porch and never look back? She didn’t care if they lived or died, so don’t come here whining about the loss of your sister. You’ll not get sympathy from me or anyone else on this ranch!”

Since he’d learned of Belinda’s death, Wyatt had been full of outrage and pain. He hadn’t stopped to think the Murdock family might be feeling as injured as he.

“I’m not looking for sympathy. Especially from you. I’ll be the first to admit that Belinda had her problems. I didn’t know about the twins or anything. Not until—” he paused and drew in a heavy breath “—it was already too late. But whatever her faults, she didn’t deserve to die in a mental hospital for criminals!”

Chloe could see real grief on Wyatt Sanders’s face and it touched her in spite of who he was and all that Belinda had done to her family. “I didn’t want your sister to die. None of my family wanted any such thing to happen.”

“Maybe not. But your father was the reason she was in trouble with the law in the first place.”

Chloe’s jaw dropped. The man was obviously as crazy as his sister had been. “How could you possibly think such a thing? Your sister was a dangerous, unstable woman. I’m sorry if that pains you, but that’s the way it was.”

Tight-lipped, he said, “My sister would never have been prompted to do the things she did if your father hadn’t seduced her and ruined her life.”

Chloe had always been cursed with a quick temper. Growing up, she’d often been punished for her angry outbursts. Ladies don’t fight, her mother had gently scolded Chloe when she’d come home one afternoon from grammar school with a fat lip. It hadn’t made any difference to Lola when Chloe’d tried to explain she’d punched the playground bully in the face because he’d been calling her best friend ugly names.

According to Lola, little girls didn’t lose their tempers and they certainly didn’t resort to physical violence. It was a lesson from her mother that Chloe always remembered, but had never fully learned. She was too much like her father, she supposed. She couldn’t sit idly on her hands when an innocent person was being wronged.

Stepping from the stall, Chloe walked to within a step of Wyatt Sanders and looked him square in the eye. “I don’t know who did the seducing, my father or your sister. And I hardly imagine that you could know, either. But I do know your sister had no business becoming involved with a married man twice her age.”

There was some truth to what Chloe Murdock was saying, but Wyatt knew there were always two sides to every story. And he couldn’t believe Belinda had decided to walk down the wrong path all by herself.

“And your father had no business getting a woman half his age pregnant!”

“You’re damn right he didn’t,” Chloe hotly agreed. “My mother was an invalid at the time he was sleeping around with your sister! His behavior was lower than a snake’s belly, but that doesn’t change things. We could stand here all day flinging accusations at each other, but it wouldn’t bring my father or your sister back.”

A part of Wyatt admired this woman for her nononsense bluntness. He couldn’t stand people who philosophized a point to death and in the end wound up saying nothing. But in the matter of his sister, Wyatt couldn’t simply put it all behind him and say what’s done is done. Even though they hadn’t been particularly close, he’d loved Belinda. And he couldn’t help but feel guilty because he hadn’t been there for her when she’d needed him the most

He let out a long, heavy breath. “Actually, I didn’t come here to fling accusations. I would like to know exactly what happened between my sister and Mr. Murdock, but that can wait. My main concern now is my little niece and nephew.”

Chloe felt as if ice water had suddenly been dashed in her face. Adam and Anna, the twin babies that this man’s sister had left on the Bar M doorstep, were her half sister and brother. Chloe considered them her babies now and she’d already had a lawyer working on adoption proceedings. If Wyatt Sanders had any notion of trying to take them away from her, he might as well forget it here and now.

“There’s no need for you to be concerned. Adam and Anna are in perfect health and growing.”

“I understand you’ve had them here on the ranch ever since—”

Chloe couldn’t prevent a sneer from twisting her lips. “Your sister dumped them, you mean? Yes, the county judge granted me and my sisters temporary custody. Then later, when we learned they were really our half brother and sister we knew they actually belonged here anyway.”

His eyes remained on her face and Chloe got the. impression he was trying to gauge her or size her up in some way. She didn’t like the feeling at all.

“Then you think the twins belong here?”

“Of course. They’re Murdocks. This is the Murdock home.”

“You know for certain that your father sired them? Were DNA tests performed?”

Under different circumstances Chloe would have howled with laughter, but she could hardly find her sense of humor with Wyatt Sanders standing a few inches away looking as though he were ready to pounce at any given moment.

“Believe me, Mr. Sanders, there’s no need for tests to be done. For legal purposes I suppose we could have a test run to see if we truly are siblings. But once you see the twins, you’ll know that would be a waste of time and money.” She folded her arms across her breasts. “Besides, I’m going to adopt the babies. Maybe you should understand that right now.”

Chloe Murdock’s announcement stunned him. He’d been told by New Mexican authorities that Belinda’s children were under the care of the Murdock family, which consisted of three sisters. Chloe, the youngest, had direct charge over the twins. But none of the child welfare people had mentioned anything about her plans to adopt the children.

What did it all mean? Wyatt wondered. Was he going to have a fight on his hands?

“I had no idea you intended to adopt the babies,” he finally said.

“I’m not surprised. We weren’t even aware Belinda had a brother. As far as I know your sister never mentioned you. Not even when we talked to her in jail.”

Wyatt didn’t know if it was Chloe Murdock or what she was saying that was having such a strong effect on him. But suddenly his insides were shaking as if he’d just woken from a two-day drunk.

“You saw my sister while she was jailed?”

Chloe nodded. It wasn’t one of her more pleasant memories. But she and her sisters, Justine and Rose, had felt compelled to talk to the woman. She’d known things about their father that only she could tell them. And Belinda had told them some things in her own disturbed, fragmented way. Chloe had come away from the county jail feeling both saddened and sickened. From what she’d seen, Belinda Waller had once been a beautiful young woman, but drugs and alcohol had ruined her looks, her mind, and subsequently her very life. It was such a waste.

“How was she then? How long was that before she died?”

Chloe shrugged. “Two or three weeks probably. As far as how she was, I can’t really say. I didn’t know her beforehand.”

Wyatt felt weak and sick. And he wondered why he’d ever left Houston to come here. But of course, deep down he knew it was simply for the babies. He felt he owed Belinda that much.

Turning away from Chloe, Wyatt walked to the end of the long stable and stared out the open doorway at the mountain range rising directly behind the ranch.

It didn’t seem possible that his family was gone now. His mother had simply left. His father had been killed. And now Belinda was dead. The only close relatives Wyatt had left were the twins.

“Mr. Sanders? Are you all right?”

He turned slowly to see Chloe standing just behind him. She looked genuinely concerned for him, which was quite a switch from a few moments ago when he’d gotten the impression she wanted to wham the side of his head with her shovel.

“I was just thinking about Belinda,” he said, then with a sigh he swiped a hand through his coal black hair. “She was beautiful and outgoing. One of those bubbly kind of people who laughed a lot. She loved excitement and always liked to stay on the go.” His expression grim, he glanced away from her. “But her traveling days are all over now.”

Whatever Chloe felt about Belinda Waller, she harbored no malice toward this man. As far as she and her family knew, he had nothing to do with the damage his sister had done to their father and their ranch. It would serve no purpose to describe to him the pathetic creature she’d seen locked behind bars. He obviously didn’t know what his sister had become. And Chloe hardly wanted to be the one to tell him.

“Well, we might as well go up to the house so you can see the twins,” she said, while telling herself the sooner he saw the babies, the sooner he would leave the ranch. “Aunt Kitty is probably feeding them a snack about now.”

“Earlier, at the house, a small woman with gray hair answered the door. Was that your aunt?”

Chloe nodded and Wyatt said, “I figured she was the housekeeper or nanny or something.”

“We’re all family around here,” she told him, her voice laced with pride.

“I see,” he said. “And she helps take care of the twins while you’re doing this?” He gestured around the large stable.

The way he said this made it sound as if she were no better than a common ditch digger. And she suddenly decided it was a shame the inside of this man wasn’t as nice as the outside. But then, in her experience, men were usually lacking beneath the surface.

“She does,” Chloe answered his question. “Aunt Kitty loves the twins as much as me and my sisters.”

He didn’t say anything to that and Chloe wondered what he was thinking and why he was really here. She somehow knew she hadn’t heard everything from him yet

“Well, right now I have to get the horses off the walker. If you’d rather not wait, you can go on up to the house without me,” she told him.

Wyatt figured if he was smart, he wouldn’t wait. He’d go see the babies without this woman’s interference. But he didn’t always do the smart thing. Believing Belinda’s happy stories proved that much.

“I’ll wait. Is there anything I can help you with?”

Surprised by his offer, she looked at him. Not as a threat, but simply as a man. “I wouldn’t want you to dirty yourself.”

There wasn’t anything he needed to prove to this woman. Her opinion of him didn’t matter at all. Yet the idea that she thought of him as soft, pricked his ego as nothing had in years. “I’ve been known to get a little dirt under my fingernails before.”

She gave him a dry little smile. “Scratching and clawing your way to the top, I suppose?”

“You find something wrong with ambition, Ms. Murdock?”

“Not when it’s aimed in the right direction, Mr. Sanders.”

Brushing past him, she walked out of the stable to leave Wyatt standing by the empty stall. For a moment he considered following her, but then he decided there wouldn’t be much point in it. This was her turf, and she obviously figured he’d be more of a hindrance than a help.

It took her only a matter of a few minutes to return the four horses to their stalls. Wyatt stood silently by, watching her work and wondering if this was how she spent all of her time here on this isolated New Mexican ranch. In his opinion it was a shame to see a beautiful woman like her buried in such a place.

Once she was ready to go, Wyatt followed her out of the stable and along the beaten path leading back to the house. Along the way they passed several barns and a maze of connecting metal pens.

Wyatt didn’t see any cattle except one bull lying near a mound of alfalfa hay. Closer to the house, in a small wooden corral, a black calf poked its head through the fence and bawled loudly.

“You’ll get your bottle soon enough, Martin,” Chloe told the calf. “You’re not the only one around here who’s hungry.”

“Where’s his mother? Can’t she feed him?” Wyatt asked as they walked on at a brisk clip. Did the woman move at this pace all day, he wondered. If she did, she had to feel like hell by nightfall. And weren’t there any cowboys around to help?

“His mother is dead. My sister Rose and I take turns hand-feeding him.” Chloe didn’t go on to tell him that Martin’s mother was killed when Belinda torched a section of the ranch. It was a horrible scene she hated to think about, much less relate to him.

A few moments later, the two of them entered a small courtyard landscaped with an assortment of desert plants, a couple of piñon pines and redwood lawn furniture.

A ground-level porch made a square with the back of the house. Wyatt followed her across one end of it, through a screen door and into a warm, cluttered kitchen. Two steps inside the room, Wyatt stopped dead in his tracks as he spotted two red-headed babies sitting side by side in a pair of high chairs.

These were his sister’s children, the only close relatives he had left. Yet incredibly they looked like the woman standing next to him.

“Aunt Kitty, this is Wyatt Sanders.”

Wyatt tore his gaze away from the babies to see the petite gray-haired woman had joined them. She was wiping her hands on a tea towel and looking Wyatt over with open suspicion.

“Yes, he told me his name when he came to the door. I see you found Chloe,” she told him.

He nodded politely toward the older woman, but before he could get a word out, Chloe said, “Did he tell you he’s Belinda Waller’s brother?”

Kitty’s face grew ashen and her wide gaze flew from her niece to the dark-haired stranger. “Belinda’s brother?” she asked in a hoarse whisper. “We didn’t know she had a brother! What are you doing here?”

Wyatt turned to Chloe and wondered, not for the first time, what his next words were going to do to her.

“I’m here to take the twins home. With me,” he said quietly.